10 Movie Franchises Ruined By One Dumb Decision

Alien died with Ripley, Newt and Hicks.

By Jack Pooley /

20th Century Fox

Creating a movie franchise is the result of a gargantuan amount of effort on the part of writers, directors, producers, actors and literally hundreds of craftspeople and crew members all trying to make an entertaining work of cinema.

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Not all movies are made with the intent of spinning a franchise, of course, but just about any hit tentpole movie not directed by Christopher Nolan is likely-as-dammit to get a sequel - or five.

Yet as any film fan knows, all of that tremendous effort building a cinematic empire can be quickly undone by just one or two major creative stumbles, or in the case of these franchises, one spectacularly stupid decision which has haunted the IP ever since.

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Now, that doesn't mean these franchises are all in the toilet commercially - though many of them are - but on a creative level, they're simply spinning their wheels at best.

Several of these franchises have since received the cynical "soft-reboot" treatment, while one of them has even been hard-rebooted not once, but twice. Yikes...

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